Northern Kenya poultry company bags top African award

A chicken processing plant in northern Kenya, Kulamawe Poultry Industries, has scooped one of the five awards in the inaugural Scaling Up Nutrition Pitch competition. Only 21 entrepreneurs were selected to compete for the final five categories out of more than 450 entries from across Africa during the Nutrition Africa Investor Forum held recently in Nairobi.

The company won the 2018 SUN Pitch Competition Growth Africa category for “making available chicken products to the lower end of the market by pre-packaging as little as 100 grams to a full capon”.

The awards recognise entrepreneurs addressing malnutrition by improving public access to nutritious foods.

The competition aims to establish the viability of nutrition sensitive businesses, highlight innovation and position entrepreneurs for growth and scale.

“We settled on chicken value addition because of the nutrition component,” said Mr Denis Marangu, the CEO of Kulamawe Poultry after receiving the award.

“This means a lot to me and proves there is confidence in what we have been working on, signalling a bright future for our poultry business.”

His main aim was to help improve farmers’ livelihoods by providing a ready market for them.

Mr Marangu, who began in 2014, gets his birds from 50 small-scale farmers. Despite slaughtering between 500 and 1,000 birds a day, he cannot meet the demand.